by Louisa Hall
I don’t say any of this in an attempt to sound noble. This is, after all, an account of my sins. I haven’t always been so correct. It does me no harm to admit at this point that during the years of my worst isolation, I often considered visiting a prostitute. Despite my many unattractive tendencies, however, I’ve never wanted to take advantage of another person’s misfortune. No, as I’ve already said, what I wanted was love. The gift of two physical and emotional lives, bound up and willingly interchanged. For this I continued to anxiously hope, but very little progress was made.
I recall one lonely walk from the science center at Harvard, when the too-early darkness of New England winter had already set in. I was heading homeward, and here and there lights came on in dorm windows. Suddenly I was overcome by the hopelessness of my condition. My legs became weak; I leaned against the cold form of a bronze commemorative statue. No one would save me. I would never join up with the others. I had always been completely alone. And yet, even then, I could console myself with the fact that I was a programmer, and a brilliant one at that. Cold comfort, yes, but still it was comfort. My sadness metastasized into pride. One day, I told myself, as I hurried back to my bedroom, crossing beneath ivied thresholds, my programming brilliance would be acknowledged. Then I’d attract a suitable girlfriend. Then I’d attract many suitable girlfriends. The women would flock to my genius like moths.
Needless to say, this line of thought is revolting, even for the mind of an eighteen-year-old boy. I’m now fifty-eight. I’ve been married to a woman I loved. I understand that women aren’t moths, that my sense of scale was completely off-kilter.
And perhaps it’s still out of whack. Of what importance are the thwarted desires of awkward young men, when the oceans are rising, the deserts are coming, and families are trading their freedoms for houses? But I had no such perspective when I was in college. I was just a computer-bound kid. We were still hopeful about new machines. The country teemed with nerd savants, Zuckerberg was my classmate at Harvard, Deep Blue had conquered Kasparov, Palo Alto was booming, and all of us were inventing. I felt nearly fully alive.
This un–fully fledged state continued after my graduation. Even when MeetLove.com was launched from my cramped Palo Alto apartment, I was still lonely. I worked out of my bed. Long hours at work meant that I rarely interacted with humans. Because they were so infrequent, the interactions I did have were triply awkward. Approaching a female, my limbs seemed to weigh twice their usual weight. My face expanded to blimp-like proportions. My lips thickened with dread. I approached potential companions with the sense of myself as an amorous cow. Even when MeetLove went public and the millions accrued in my bank account, when they called me the inventor of modern courtship, when I was profiled in every tech magazine and photographed only at flattering angles, my romantic bugs still hadn’t been fixed.
In desperation, five years into my adventures in adulthood, I concluded that I was working too much. At the age of twenty-six, I embarked on semiretirement. Pursuing some magazine picture of leisure, I moved from Palo Alto to Santa Barbara and bought a house on top of a mountain. It was my stilted idea of a Dionysian palace: vast mazes of rooms, fig trees, balconies, curtains of bougainvillea and a jacaranda that bloomed purple from February through mid-December. In the back there was an infinity pool, spilling over the mountain.
Such opulence insists on contentment, but I was very unhappy. I’d taken refuge in work. Cut down to part-time, I felt exposed, naked as a sea creature peeking out of his shell. Awkward, cutaneous, vulnerable to attack. What friendly acquaintances I’d maintained in Palo Alto were left behind; in Santa Barbara, I descended into solitude so thick that conversations with repairmen became anxious social occasions. Quiet dropped over my house.
For two lonely years, I woke overwhelmed by the weight of desire. From my office overlooking the ocean, I maintained my farce of a business, an involuntarily celibate dating tycoon. Once my eyes had grown bleary, I disrobed and swam laps in my pool. Later, exhausted, the man-child I was emerged from the water. Wrapped in a robe, I paced the halls of my Peter Pan Mansion, my Pansion, waiting for the arrival of Wendy. At 8:00 I ate a microwavable dinner. I sat on my patio, overlooking the sunset. Below me, clusters of palm trees were painted green-gold. Tousled by wind, their fronds resembled tangles of unspooled cassette tape.
Even from the perspective of prison, those were challenging years. I’d like to use my time machine to travel back to that house. I’d sit beside that unhappy child, keep him company while he ate his dinner. I’d reassure him that his loneliness would come to an end. I’d paint him a picture of his wife and his child. “For seven years,” I could tell him, “you’ll wander the desert, and then you will no longer suffer. You will be given a family.” Can you imagine how that would change him? It would give him such hope. Perhaps it would alter the course that he took. Perhaps even now he’d be happy. To keep that possibility open, I’d leave out the next part: “Seven years after that, you’ll be made a false prophet. You’ll preside over decline and be charged with the ruin.” I’d skip that little postscript, and merely point out to that child that he stands on the threshold of an invention.
It came to me one morning while contemplating a pineapple. The fruit had been left on the marble breakfast island by the housemaid I employed at the time. Her name was Dolores. She cleaned my sterile mansion in determined silence. She brought me groceries and laundry supplies and deposited them with the least possible fuss, then drove down the mountain to return to her life. She was not an effusive young woman. But that’s neither here nor there, at least at this point in the story. What matters now is the pineapple she left. I encountered it first thing in the morning, bleary-eyed in pajamas, burdened by my awful desire. Even in that state, the pineapple calmed me.
Pineapple. Ananas comosus. You’ve heard of the golden ratio? The Fibonacci sequence? There was the spiraling pineapple, content on the marble counter. Complete in her waxen armor, her dusty green hexagonal cells. A composite fruit, each row of turrets climbing upward according to pattern. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. Each term in the sequence is the sum of two terms before it, producing the most elegant spiral. Looping, orbiting, but never the same: progressing always upward and out. A helixed fruit, the golden Ananas. I held her in my hand, then to my breast. Spiked, violent, beautiful. Common to us all.
It was then that I dreamed of the seduction equation. I dreamed of a pattern, reaching backward in time, producing a new term for the present. I saw the cycle that links us to the terms that came before we were born: our parents, our grandparents, the first settlers who came to our shores. We’re linked to histories we can’t ever know, forgotten stories that form our most intimate substance. Holding that pineapple, I saw that such links aren’t actually chains, but rather widening spirals, delicate as the ripples that build into waves, the shoots that grow into branches on the most magnificent trees. I knew then that I was a branch, no less connected than anyone else. I encountered the dreamers I came from, and understood that I was the link between them and the world as it would become in my lifetime.
(4)
Alan Turing
c/o Sherborne School
Abbey Rd., Sherborne
Dorset DT9 3AP
7 April 1928
Dear Mrs. Morcom,
This is to say thank you for coming so quickly, in response to my letter, which I now realize was a little dramatic. It’s only that the world seemed as if it were ending. Thank you also for telling Chris that your travel plans just happened to change, and for the letter you left me, which was very kind, despite the fact that I seem to have overestimated the severity of Chris’s illness. I have read your letter five or six times, and I now feel as if we are friends.
I also want to say I’m sorry for avoiding you during your visit. I should have gone up to you and introduced myself, but I was rather queasy about having written you such a very urgent letter when Chris turned out to be fine. I should never have told you that I had a premonitio
n of his death. That was extreme. Also, I think perhaps I shouldn’t have told you so many extra details about my personal life, which perhaps you had no interest in knowing.
I also regretted the part in my previous letter when I defended breaking the honor code in our particular case. I do not believe that one ought go about breaking codes as it seems convenient. It was an especially dirty thing to have done in Chris’s name. It is our goal, as you know, to describe the natural sequences by which human beings develop their mind-sets. We both have great respect for the patterns that govern our material world. We agree that we humans are composed of such rules, so it is a dangerous thing to go about breaking them on a whim. I should not have done so in Chris’s name, especially not without his permission.
But I am still learning, and I have only now applied myself as I ought to have done all along. I’m hoping you’ll forgive me. I promise to reveal myself next time you are here, as I am ever so grateful for the receipt of your letter. And for the fact that you raised such a straight-up and intelligent son.
Now that he is better I can safely promise that we will return to our studies with as much vigor as we maintained previous to his illness. We are even now reopening our investigation into the Fibonacci sequence, in the hopes that it will reveal to us new secrets about cellular growth. I am not sure if you are already acquainted with it. It is an integer sequence that grows according to a specific pattern: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, etc. Do you recognize the pattern? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you, in case you don’t see it. I shouldn’t want my letters to resemble a mathematics exam! (Mr. Ross, my form-master last year, would say, “This room smells of mathematics! Go out and fetch a disinfectant spray!” He is my chief enemy at our school.) The sequence follows as such: the previous number (n1) is added to the current number (n2), producing the next number (n3). So 1 plus 1, for instance, makes 2, and 2 plus 1 makes 3.
This may seem unremarkable enough, but would you believe that innumerable organisms grow according to this very sequence? The leaves of artichokes, for instance, and pineapples, ferns, palm trees, and waves. You can see why Chris and I have been drawn to investigate further. Such a seemingly inorganic pattern, shared across so many species! Why shouldn’t this be the sequence that governs the growth of our brains?
My favorite example of the Fibonacci sequence in nature is the chambered nautilus, whose shell is built of adjoining chambers that spiral according to our very pattern. Here at Sherborne, we have a nautilus in a glass case in the science classroom, along with a very nice fossilized fern. Someone has cut the nautilus in half and labeled the pattern of chambers with little red pins and paper flags. You can see each room the shell’s inhabitant once occupied, at each phase of his life. It is very beautiful to look at when your attention is not kept by the lecture Mr. Phelps is currently delivering. The other day I pointed it out to Chris, and said, “Look, another time capsule!” Of course Chris immediately knew what I was referring to.
I find it comforting to know that we most likely grow according to regular numerical patterns. Perhaps I am only waiting for my pattern, and when I do, I will shoot up and overtake Henry Thornton as the tallest boy in my class! I am only being humorous. But it is amazing, don’t you think, that such series exist connecting us to pinecones and waves?
But I am rattling on. I have gone on 805 words, not counting the date. I intended to be briefer this time, only I am very excited that Chris and I are back at our work!
I promise to report our progress to you regularly, as you are probably very proud of your son and anxious to hear news of his studies. For now, though, I shall stop. In the meantime, Chris and I shall continue working hard on discovering the mechanism for cellular growth. The possibilities are endless, you know, if that kind of thing could be understood. We could one day create artificial organisms, prompting them to grow from single units in the same way that humans do! One day perhaps we’ll make a human brain, brick upon brick! Only imagine.
Yours very sincerely,
Alan Turing
P.S.: I do think, considering his cough, that Chris ought to refrain from excessively sporty activity. You might suggest this to him next time you write him, as he is anxious to return to his previous routine.
P.P.S.: The last, on my honor: I hereby promise that if in the future Chris should fall ill, even if only slightly, I will be sure to write you again. One cannot be too cautious. That is all. I shall return to my studies, before it is lights-out and I must go to sleep.
(5)
The Diary of Mary Bradford
1663
ed. Ruth Dettman
10th. Night. Perhaps, methinks, tomorrow morning I shall wake to darkness, and never again the promise of light.
Have had high words with father about impending marriage. Feared perhaps he would weep. He does not wish me to marry contrary to inclination or before I am ready, and yet he believes it to be best. He fears (and here it was he seemed ready to weep, and I fixed, without a tear) that he is not, as he ought to be, able to defend us from danger. Whittier (he said), a man known for estimableness and character, and courage in battle, having served under Monck when Monck was still loyal, and being awarded highest honors for service. Under great threat by natives, Massachusetts Colony requires more men of Whittier’s age. And so it be father’s wish that daughter marry, and so induce Whittier to join us.
Also, mother has resolved it to be so, feeling this to be proper time for author to come to womanhood.
In short, father resigned to unhappy arrangement. Hopes author can find herself equally tranquil.
Then sat us together in his brown study. Dark wood, leather Bible, globe; map of Copernican heavens; many books arranged to show bindings; scent of tobacco, parchment, wood shavings, ink. All these things, beloved between us. Despite indignation, awareness of closeness with father, and of possessing his highest trust. Watched father’s face, much fallen from years of great conflict.
Seeing this, and being repentant, took pains to convince father I comprehend all reasons for marriage. Importance of new colonies; liberty of conscience; danger, for Parliamentarians, of remaining in England; literacy, male and female alike; independence from monarchical rule, etc. etc. All extremely good reasons.
Still, despite best intentions, remain much troubled by anger. After discourse with father, went to meadow with Ralph. Cried until sky became thick, and of a color like a trout’s belly. Next, rain. Rocks and meadows becoming silver, and trees waving like pennons. Dark green on one side, pale green on the next. Whole banks of trees, shifting from one hue to the other.
13th. Up early, and busy writing. Understand now that this book was not intended as gift for young adventurer. Intended instead to sweeten marriage. Mahogany leather, gold imprint, ribbon once flattering. Father’s belief in author’s potential. Same details troublesome now, with new awareness.
Feel shallow and mean. Only Ralph understands. Has lain with me in my chamber since morning. White ruff, brown eyebrows. Eyes, liquid. Full of pity. Love him with unbearable feeling.
15th. Have been told by Besse, and this confirmed later by father, that Ralph must stay behind. Will not be permitted to sail.
Noon, and foul weather. Nothing else to report.
15th. Up, and still abed, though very late. Have nothing else to say at this point.
16th. Afternoon. Cannot sacrifice Ralph. Will not be persuaded that it be right to leave him behind, and with no explanation, him being incredibly loyal. Would sit still forever, facing the road and waiting for my return, which would never occur. Impossible to imagine for long. Will not agree to upcoming marriage. Will not travel abroad, not taking Ralph. Not even for my father’s sake. He is asking too much.
17th. Having long suspected mother’s role in issue of marriage, received proof of it in the morning. Myself and Ralph to the copse, but came instead upon mother and father exchanging high words in the bedroom, and so waited in hiding with Ralph. Mother repeated conviction that author should not
be closer to sheepdogs than people, and well time to be married.
Father: Had hoped, however, for arrangement out of affection.
Mother: Ours was an arrangement out of affection, and now you abandon me to savages, having already abandoned me once, and only to heed your daughter’s affections?
Father: And yet she must consent.
Mother: And so her consent is of more value to you than my life.
Father: (Silent, but by the sounds of it heavy chastened.)
Much troubled at heart, returned then to my chamber and only from thence when forced by hunger to look after supper. Abed, and still troubled, it grieving my heart to give father sorrow. Father, much tired by struggles, no longer so strong as he once was. And who will protect him and my mother, if not a man such as Whittier?
Has long been author’s hope that father will recover himself once we are come to new land. For father’s sake, journey must prove a success.
17th. Many hours later, still unable to sleep. Have resolved myself to marry, despite husband’s pockmarks and unsettling neck. Despite unthinkable loss of my Ralph.
18th. Up with the candle, and then to prayer, and afterwards have made my announcing. Then spent all morning conceited, for having resolved myself to sacrifice. Took exceeding long walk, and found new shine on everything. Last cow parsnips, last apricots, last walk with Ralph along edges of meadow. It being a goodly and poetic sadness, author now understands why many martyrs rejoice. Have been overweening with servants, for soon I shall lose myself. Self-sacrifice perhaps greatest indulgence. Disgust at Roger Whittier transformed into sensations of courage and remarkable grace.
